Vote for Democrats, Please: A Conventional Plea for the 2022 US Midterm Election

Note: A version of this was originally a social media post, but I figured it was worth sharing here, too. Take care, and VOTE if you can!

In 2016, I burnt out on arguing about politics online, so this is not an invitation to argue. But we do have an election tomorrow here in the US, and especially understanding the bubble I live in and that most Americans reading this will do the right thing, I'd like to ask everyone who is eligible to vote to VOTE if you haven't already. Do it as a personal favor to me. 

I may never understand how Trump, Jan. 6, and overturning Roe didn't spell the end for a certain segment of the Republican Party. The only way I can understand it is that these things are, for a disturbingly vast portion of the US population, a feature not a bug. If you are voting Republican, you are, like it or not, voting for more of this: forced birth, patriarchal white Christian nationalism, fascism. I don't use the label "fascism" lightly, but it's hard to deny that Republicans are heading in that direction, if they're not already there. 

I have never been a Republican, but I feel like not that long ago, I at least understood how someone who doesn't like paying taxes might vote Republican. And yes, there are many legitimate economic concerns today, but as someone pointed out: if you vote for Republicans due to economic anxiety, you're giving them an incentive to ruin the economy. I don't know what to do about the economy, but it seems like a global issue and as far as I can tell the only plan Republicans have is the same old rigamarole: tax cuts for the wealthy and cutting spending (but only spending that benefits non-wealthy people, like cutting back social security or walking back student loan forgiveness). Are tax cuts for the wealthy worth forcing children to give birth and putting a disturbing number of election denying conspiracy theorists in office? 

But again, I know my bubble, so I digress. I understand how satisfying it is to engage in the common leftist pastime of Knowing What the Democrats Should Do. While I have my doubts about how effective this is a political strategy in general, my plea is that at least until the polls close tomorrow, this is not going to help. Like or not (and yes, I understand that the most argumentative out there do not), Democrats are at the moment the only traditional political means we have to stop the very real harm that Republicans are doing and will continue to do. 

I think of voting and engaging in traditional party politics as something like the Buddhist distinction between the two truths: ultimate and conventional. In the pure pristine realm of political theory, my ultimate political views are probably something like anarcho-socialism. But alas, the US is so far removed from this ideal, that I can't get much traction going around telling people not to engage in politics until a 100% suitable candidate comes along. But in the meantime, real people are suffering and will continue to suffer. And yes, Democrats cause suffering, too, especially in their foreign policy, but overall it seems to me that the lesser evil is a great deal less evil. So at the level of conventional political truths, where you need to talk in terms of parties and current political processes, I totally 100% support Democrats even if at the ultimate level I think humanity needs to make far more radical changes. 

As someone put it somewhere, voting is like public transportation: you take it to get closer to your destination even if that bus or train doesn't get you all the way there. And given how our current political systems work, the Democrats need to win big to overcome the structural advantages of the Republicans.

Besides, bumbling though they may be, Democrats might go through with forgiving some student loans, kinda legalize marijuana, provide some help to the recently invigorated labor movement, and make life slightly easier for some people. Oh, and they don't want to force people to give birth or encourage the increasing visibility of racism and anti-semitism. 

I realize I'm probably mostly preaching to the choir here, but please, please do not vote for Republicans. And if you can, vote for Democrats. And if you need some incentive, know that it will make me happy if you vote for Democrats, at least conventionally speaking. Take care.

One last thing: If you need information about how and where to vote, check out Vote.gov.